User blog:Nemosyne/Why Read The Secrets of Droon?
Hi, I'm Nemosyne. I may be relatively new to this wiki (I joined on Dec. 9, 2010), and I may currently be a freshman at university, but I have found ''The Secrets of Droon'' to be a fascinating children's book series. Why? Tony Abbott, the series' author, is awesome at foreshadowing and tying loose ends up, both within individual books and throughout the entire series. In each book, Abbott never reveals something extremely important to the plot without providing hints beforehand. Take the situation with the "fazool" potion in ''The Lost Empire of Koomba'' as an example. Empress Mashta mentions that, the last time she and the Sand Children handled the "fazool", a monster soon appeared, and the Sand Children believe the two are linked. Soon enough, Neal, Keeah, and Hob are stuck fighting a monster, and Julie, after her visions of the past, realizes that the spilled "fazool", in fact, takes the form of that monster. If we read near the end of the book, without any prior preparation, that the "fazool" is also a monster, we would be shocked, angry, and wondering why the author would write something so absurd. However, Abbott warns us beforehand with his foreshadowing of the "fazool"'s powers, so we do not get mad. Abbott misses nothing in his works. Abbott does likewise with the series, too--he always satisfies our eager brains by providing the spoilers that logically follow from his previously dropped hints. Perhaps the largest such hint-and-spoiler arc is Eric Hinkle's precise relationship to Queen Zara and Prince Urik. Abbott reveals throughout The Secrets of Droon that Eric is connected to them both in a variety of ways, such as Eric's ownership of the Pearl Sea (an artifact that Urik made), the Wand of Urik's almost magnetic attraction to Eric in ''The Moon Scroll'', Hoja mistakenly calling Eric "Urik" in the same book, and Eric's pangs of pain, similar to Galen and Sparr's (who are Zara's sons), whenever he mentions the then-dead Zara's name. Even Eric's outdated Wikipedia article (as of Oct. 8, 2010) acknowledges that the series implies that Eric and Queen Zara are related. Abbott takes the hints he has dropped throughout the series to their logical conclusion when he reveals in ''Special Edition 8. The Final Quest'' that Eric is Urik's great-great-great-grandson and therefore Queen Zara's great-great-great-great-grandson. As a humorous aside, ''Special Edition 7. The Genie King'' reports that Eric's connection to Zara is "one of the deepest and longest-held secrets in all of Droon", and The Final Quest's official description says that Eric needs to "uncover the greatest secret in all of Droon", referring to that statement in The Genie King. Abbott always goes down to the last detail with his hints and spoilers. The Secrets of Droon contains a great deal more foreshadowing than the average children's book series, and that is why I recommend it to children 8 and up. Younger children, though they may like the series' fast-paced plot and diverse characters, will probably miss all the hints about characters that Abbott drops within each book and throughout his series. If you want your children to absorb what foreshadowing is and how they can use it to predict characters' actions and motives in other literary works, get them to read Tony Abbott's The Secrets of Droon. --Nemosyne Category:Blog posts